Charlot & Charlotte

Director: Ole Bornedal
Producer: Michael Obel
Produced by: Thura Film
Duration: 4 x 52 min.
Year of Production: 1996
Original Title: Charlot & Charlotte

Winner of: Special Prize, Prix Italia, Naples, 1996.

Charlot and Charlotte is the story of the meeting and further development of two apparently quite irreconcilable characters: arrogant, dramatically self-assured Charlot from Manhatten and diffident, self-effacing Charlotte from a small country town. As fate would have it, the two women bump into one another one late evening when they both seem to have been stood up. When it turns out that they are both being followed — for very different reasons — they suddenly find themselves in Charlotte’s car on their way out of the city on a journey, an escape, which takes them all the way through the beauty of the Danish spring, from Copenhagen to Skagen. On the way they encounter a number of very different characters. Everyone from con men, swindlers and fraudsters — the odd serial killer disguised as a transvestite, a police chief called Orson, the senile old poetic Birksted on the run from a big Copenhagen hospital because he wants to die in his arm chair looking out across the beautiful Danish countryside, a mad theatrical manager who pushes Charlotte on stage as Ophelia when the real star turns sick, the unpredictable, narcissistic TV host, the anaesthetist at the frustrating hospital with time for coffee but not the patients, the tormented nursing home residents terrorised by Nurse Ratchet in the murky little village, the woman with the gift of the second sight in a back yard, the big, bluff fisherman who wins Charlotte’s heart in the end and makes it flare up like a volcano — and the quiet, gentle guy who finally defreezes Charlotte.
And — this is not just the story of a harpy and a clumsy clogs who gradually learn from one another, growing into two wonderful women worthy of emulation. It is also a witty satire on our own day and the people who populate it.